Statcounter

Month: September 2013

I’ve taken down the Sanctuary Campaign!
In roughly 1/2 the time it took me to grind through the Haven Campaign, I’ve managed to fight my way from a mage seeking refuge on the islands controlled by stereotyped naga to the home of my former husband and murder him. I am pleased.

Sanctuary plays with weaker mobs, larger stacks, and fewer hitpoints than both Haven and Necropolis. I always felt that I was on the back foot going into a fight. What did happen, though, was that I was able to play the game like I’d wanted to from the start: get in the enemies face, mix it up, and really not worry about the actual mob count. If a whole stack went down it would be just a few days before I was back up to snuff.

Each of the three factions I’ve played so far has had a very distinct playstyle.
Necropolis: Regenerating ranged powerhouses that have cheap foot troops to run interference.
Haven: Fast, fragile, elite troopers that do good damage, with a strong defensive bent.
Sanctuary: Slow, Fragile foot troopers that make up for their weak damage output in overwhelming numbers.

Each has played very different, despite every hero having both might and magic powers, and having access to similar powers within both might and magic. It has given the game a longevity it might not have otherwise.

The final map was difficult. It wasn’t Haven level ball breaking, but I did have to start over once, and I recieved a tip from my buddy that helped me roll the map.

The final map has both Haven and Inferno on the same map, with a neutral town in between. There is also a special quest to beat the mission without taking any haven towns that wasn’t the final keep with Gerhardt in it that I wanted to complete. The first go round I was super cautious. A giant demon and his army threaten you to come after him after you take your first town, but he is clearly super-powerful and outnumbers you significantly. He lets you keep the one town you take first, but the second and third town are both his, and he lets you know it by attacking with overwhelming force if you manage to capture either. However, he will not come out of his keep and attack you unless you are close enough that he can sortie out and return to base. If he comes out however, he destroys you. I played around him cautiously for over 10 months in game time before I gave up and started again.

There is a secret island base, way north through the waterways, that allows you to pick up an extra 2-3 weeks worth of creatures for a pretty cheap cost. Grabbing that allowed me to blitzkrieg the map once I’d restarted. I sent my second in command to get them while my main character torched everything between my starting village and the one town the demon would let me take. At this point in the game I was firing chain lightning at the top of every battle, and it would kill the whole opponents side. I’d gotten it at the end of the last map, where it was a little underwhelming. However, starting the map with it is completely brutal, but this only lasts a few weeks, a month at most, before everything starts having to many dudes to just blow away before they can harm you. With that knowledge in hand I waited for my second to get back from his recruitment mission. Once he’d returned I waited just a little more until the start of the next week, grabbed all the newly minted soldiers from both my towns, and then bolted straight towards the main badguy.

Each enemy group, when you hover over it, has a threat level. It goes, in order: Trivial – Low – Average – Modest – Severe – High -Deadly. Normally I would wait until something was at least average before attacking it as the losses I would suffer would be to great. The chain lightning had given me confidence, however, as it ripped down even severe threats for me without suffering a single loss. Emboldened, I attacked the demon in his volcano hideout. With the help of my friends from the north and my powerful early stage chain lightning, I tore him apart. I was most pleased! From that point on I had an upper hand. I had three, and then quickly thereafter four, towns and each was producing massive quantities of gold and troops. I was able to quickly beat the mini-boss and then the final boss.

While the final boss was uninteresting, the mini-boss took a few tries. She whips every square in her front arc and within her 4 square reach on her second activation every turn. It took a few goes at it, but I eventually found a solid strategy that enabled me to drop her without only some major losses among the ranged troopers.I simply ran around to her back without attacking the first turn, and then she’d not hair-whip and kill everyone. I was able to quickly replenish the ranged losses and go after the main boss, taking the level and the campaign.

Now, onto the Inferno Campaign, which I have been looking forward to for a while. Its got succubus, pit fiends, and cerebus!

Hogan, Hero of the Resistance, has triumphed over Sodaving, Kayazy overlord of Leryn!

With a little help from his friends, of course!

This weeks IKRPG game on Tuesday ( I know I’m late, its been crazy), Finally pitted the adventurers against Sodaving and his personal guards. Though the fight was quick, with Sodaving going down quickly, there was no lack of danger to our intrepid hero.

After being hauled up and over the edge of the culvert in which we had followed our friend Sev and having dispersed the pistol wraiths, we found Koldun Lord Lazar and his right and left hand ladies in charge of a fairly empty area. Sodaving and his lackeys were firmly under watch. It also turned out our employer, Niccoli, had fooled Lazar into believing he was the world famous Reinholdt, and was advising him. Lazar questioned who we were and what was going on. We informed him that we were wrongly accused prisoners of Sodaving, forced to fight for his pleasure while he was feeding information to the Golden Crucible rebels. To convince him, I produced a map that I had found before ever entering Leryn, and told him that Sodaving had given it to us, thinking that we were Golden Crucible allies, and was therefore working against Khadoran interest in Laele

I’m going to interrupt myself here, as this is a point of the story I am none too proud of. I like bringing down the bad guy, and I like doing it clean. Playing an honest thief/alchemist/spy has been a challenge, and its one of the parts of the game I have enjoyed the most. That I felt there was no real, legitimate, in-game way to take out the big dude without framing him for something he didn’t do, feels so out of character, and it will haunt Jerek for a long time. With no real evidence, and only lies, was there actually anything Sodaving was doing that we could have, if we tried harder, found to bring him down? I’m not sure, and I’ll never know. Sodaving is dead, Leryn is under Menite control, and we are back on the run. It is good to have brought him down, but would the Menites just done it for us. We will never know. Now back to our narrative.

Once I recounted the false narrative to Lazar, staring Sodaving in the eye the whole time, he knew he was done. He broke free, a pair of followers running with him, and vanished into the crowed. Our tracker Von, however, was able to watch the crowd and follow him. We pursued. He lead us into the sewers where we had first encountered him after a lengthy chase. When we finally caught up to him and his two lackeys, a crazy monster broke out of the water in ambush obviously allied with Sodaving. Sor and Lefty, his Laborjack armed with a drill and a mining pick, took the brunt of the Hunter’s wrath, with Von and Ivan, the Explorer and Doomreaver, up front as they were the fastest, drawing Sodavings attention. I was stuck in the middle. That was perfect, however, as I am an intellectual archetype character with command 6, meaning that I give +1 to hit and damage to all allies within 6″ of me.

The battle took place both sides of a raging sewage channel, and the bridge over top of it. Sodaving strode in first, laying huge amounts of damage into Ivan, and slapping Von as well. Ivan Returned a blow, but Von was stymied, having to shoot into melee while being in melee himself. The -8 that created was more than could be overcome, even for him. Sor and Lefty struck back at the Hunter and mauled him pretty severely: enough that he took a bit of refuge in the raging sewage in order to not be attacked by the duo again. Sodaving, having enough of Ivan’s sharpened door and really having it out for Hogan used his acrobatic skills, which were impressive for a terrifying murdering machine decked out in mechanica armor with huge axes, to roll between Ivan and Von. He looked me in the eyes, and their icy looks told me he was going to end me. He connected on his first hit and Ivan ate the attack for me, his only friend. He was unable to protect me from his second attack, and I dropped to three HP. The last attack, thankfully, missed and I dodged backward out of reach where I could spike an acid grenade on his face. However, I had to survive the round to do it, and Sodaving looked just fine at that point.

Until Lefty. Sor roared out to Lefty to charge Sodaving, and the ever faithful laborjack surged into combat with the deadly Kayazy prince. Though we all had had problems hitting him Lefty had death in his cortex, connecting with a grand overhand swing. His pick bit deep into Sodavings back and armor,who howled in pain as Lefty yanked the pick out with inhuman strength, ripping apart both mechanical apparatus and human muscle. The pain was obvious in his eyes, and though he was harmed, he looked far from dead.

When it got around to my turn, I dropped an acid bomb onto Sodaving. I used the scatter rules and attacked with a pow 12 to all in the area of the grenade, feeling I needed to do supreme damage to actually kill the villain, and not expecting my dice to be good enough to hit. Instead, after suffering from the attention of Ivan and the gentle caress of Lefty, the simple damage of the alchemical acid was enough to put him in the ground. He staggered over to the edge of the waterway, where a giant sewergator, lurking for a chance at a lucky meal, sprung out and ended him forever. The remaining minions and the Hunter were easily dispatched by my compatriots, and we limped out of the sewer to the chorus of the Menite faithful outside the walls. the Khadorans were about to be expelled. The Northern Crusade had arrived.

I really enjoy the sealed events of prerelease days. The sealed environment gives you access to all the flavor and mechanics of the new set, without having to commit a ton of memory for drafting or standard. Allowing you, in a casual atmosphere, to build a deck that is generally pretty good and can stand on its own with a little good play. It also gives you the thrill of opening a pile of packs and hoping for good stuff. Which I never got.

Ah well! It was still a fun time. I ended up at the local store right about 11:00 for the midnight event, and hung outside with some of the standard crowd before heading in to get going. I met my brother and a pair of friends there, and it was setting out to be good times. I signed up for the blue set, as it seemed the strongest, according to that one article I was able to read before heading out. It seemed pretty reasonable. A fatty 6/6 with a trigger to get it to 10/10 and tap down four creatures looks pretty good. The review also pointed out that blue had a stable of good cards, including uncharacteristic fattys in Shipbreaker Kraken, Bethnic Giant, and Precient Chimera. Appearances can be deceiving, but I was not deceived. Blue crushed the game out for me in the first round, dropped the second to a mirror after changing pair colors, and then picked up again on the final. I started out with a U/R deck in the first go, having Rage of Porphoros, Magma Jet, and Lightning strike, but a few anemic bodies and a couple larger ones, with blue rounding out in the fatty and flying department. My friends convinced me to run the green, but its against my nature, I wasn’t able to cast the spells I wanted, and waiting around for my giant green creatures did me in in the second round.

Speaking of the second round. My opponent was fantastic with his B/U deck. Flyers and removal, with 3 Pharika’s Cure, 2 Lash the whip, and a pile of Stymied Hopes and Dissolves. The Nessian Lion took one game over for me, paired with a Feral Invocation and monstrous to make him 6/6 hexproof and indestructible. I out raced the unblocked Prognostic Sphinx to just edge him out in the second. The third was less entertaining, as he dropped the Sphinx again and took me to town without so much as a whimper.

The Kraken was exactly as advertised, and every time I resolved him on the field, I ended up taking the game. He’s a bad ass in limited, and I expect to get beat by him every draft.

The best part of the prerelease weekend, though, was the Two Headed Giant that my brother and I entered as The Brothers Grim. We went in thinking to get some heroic work done, and appropriately chose green and white: the colors with the most heroic. We opened almost no heroic creatures, and even less triggers though. Instead we went with a, to me, clever strategy. He took all the ramp and fatties in a big, stompy, rampy, W/G deck. Two Anthousa, Vulpine Goliath, Arbor Colossus, Ashen Rider, the works. I took all of the removal, and a ton of B/R weenies. I was just there to clog the field, chump block, and clear the path. We took two of three, again, and ended with a positive record, which was good enough for us. The first game was the one we dropped. It took us long enough to put the decks together that we didn’t have a whole lot of time to shuffle, and with only one game, a lot was hanging on this one opening hand. My brother’s was a little light on mana, but we figured we’d be OK with his pair of rampy creatures. We could have been, as he ended the game with only four on the table, but his three mana producers in the graveyard. The first one we lost to a combat trick, and the others we lost to an ill thought out Anger of the Gods. The next two we took to town against a pair of kids, and a new girl and her boy. But, we emerged victorious, and that’s what counted. We each got a pair of packs, and I got to have a blast with my brother. I look forward to doing the Chosen of the Gods Prerelease in a few months time, and maybe getting a draft or two in in the meantime. Who knows, with a baby on the way!

Years ago, when I had just moved to Maryland, and started making friends, I got hooked on Xcom for the computer. I’d go over to my friends house, and we’d just watch the insanity that was the game unfold. We never beat the game together. Eventually I bought it for the PlayStation and beat it after many grueling hours. It is one of my favorite, and defining, moments in my gaming hobby. I’d only beat one, maybe two other games at that point: Mega Man 3, and Rayman. The games I beat before God of War came out could be counted on one hand. Now I have a strict policy of not buying games before I beat the one I am currently playing. Right now, that means that I have to beat Heroes of Might and Magic VI before XCOM:Enemy Within comes out. That there is going to be an epic task.

the revitalization of the XCOM series is something that is incredible for me, as it brings me back to the days of yore when all I had to do was shoot aliens in my free time. I enjoyed, nearly universally, the game that came out last year. I bought both DLC’s and thoroughly enjoyed them both. Slingshot gave me a chance not to have to repeat the same missions on my C/I run-through, and it really ups the difficulty and pace of the missions.

Now, with the concept of Enemy Within on the horizon, I’m re-psyched to play the game. I never made it through an I/I run, and I’d really like to give that a shot.

Some of the concepts that the game has going for it are strange to me. I’m not sure where the gene therapy thing is going, and meld is a strange concept. It seems to be a forced way for the game designers to tackle the primary, safest route to mission victory: Heavy fire base. Really, and the new alien types are a little odd. But armored dudes with huge weapons? Count me in. Especially if they can punch Sectoids so hard that they both fly backward into cars so hard that the cars explode.

I’m really looking forward to the game, and though its seems, from everything I can find, do be a stand alone, I’m OK with that, as long as it ends closer to where the original game ended, I’ll be really pleased. Here is hoping for a great game come November!

Last night started, as it does so often recently, with our characters in cages. Ivan, our friendly neighborhood Doomreaver and I ringed together, with the others nearby in separate cages. Visitors come to Von, and Sev before coming over to me. Nicoli, our gobber employer, lets me in on some information. There is going to be a time when I am asked to present information on Sodaving, and I have some dirt I can throw in. Good. Being in these cages and fighting until we die seems like a poor out for Jerek, er, Hogan.

The crowd, over the days we are in captivity and not fighting, take less and less of an interest in us, and the enthusiastic recruits and the staunch supporters both vanish. Sodavings guard also diminish, to the point where its significantly noticeable. One of the set of patrons that doesn’t disappear though, is a pair of women who have been lurking around. It turns out that these two are the resident Koldun Lords right and left hand, respectively.
Interesting.

Sodaving, after days of imprisoning us, finally decided to do something about the accusations that he wished to bring against us. He calls out Sev, our poor, broken Gunmage ally. They will settle things the old Llaelese way: A duel.
I make sure to whisper conspicuously that Sevs good shooting arm is completely broken, while Sodavings is good as new. This is put down with cries of Sev being ambidextrous. A likely story!

As any proper duel does, this one calls for a second for each duelist. I try and volunteer to be Sodavings second, but Tom’s son, a prickly brat, is way ahead of me. Its sad I don’t get to try and jam Sodavings gun.

The duel is a quick affair, with both contestants beings shot in the face. Well, both were flesh wounded on the face, with each taking significant damage.
Sev, however, suspects Sodaving of cheating, and calls him out.
In front of everyone.
Sevs Luck is about to run out.

He gets tied up, and told that his fate is up to his companions, now, as he has dared to judge the fairness of his host. He is then tossed into a deep, dark, dank pit.

We are given our gear and told. Go, rescue him, if you can.
We swiftly don our gear, strap on Harnesses and drop down the pit to rescue our longtime ally from whatever is down there.

Its a dark, dank closed off culvert with a trio of bodies on the ground as well as gunpowder barrels, which is strange. There are also piles of refuse. Then, as we all start to get our bearing, Three eerie glowing spirits emerge from the darkness, pistols pointed at us.

The Pistol Wraiths get the jump on us, and each one fires away. They manage to miss a lucky few times, and we get to start our turns. While everyone fought the wraiths, I finally got to get my alchemist on. Fire in the hole drops a grenade on one of the wraiths, and then I spend my quick action to grab a grenade from my belt, my free to pull the pin, and then toss again as my action, hitting him again. I don’t do enough damage to drop it, but I’m pretty confident. I spend my extra bandoleer action to ready another grenade, and as soon as my next companion goes, I start off spending a feat point to toss another grenade. It costs a lot of money to go through 3 grenades a round, but man is it worth it! I missed at the start of Sors turn, but it was all worth it, as the next turn rats pop out from the gunpowder barrels, and we have more targets, and I toss three grenades again. The pistol wraiths managed to get me again, and I was down to 0 feat points with a broken agility, but -2 to hit doesn’t care when the dude tossing POW 12 AOE’s is within 4″. I take out a pair of rats, gaining a feat point, and once again tossed a pair of grenades at the second pistol wraith to come my way. Thankfully the other was taken care of between me going, and them going again.

Fun was had by all, and next week we get to see what the consequences of our actions are.

And the encounter put us at 30xp, so I finally get to be a spy. I really wish, as my cover so far has been Hogan, Freedom Fighter of Laele, that there was a Freedom Fighter career, or something that I could at least use as my cover identity. Alas, I just have to use another one, my Searforge Trader cover I have also used in game before.

While I was looking at the book for my cover identity, I cam across a couple more career pairs I’d like to try out, and I really think the design space in Warmachine could really support one of them.

On Sunday, I made a trade with a friend. This trade was probably much better for him than it was for me. I am now in the possession of a box of bane knights. Unpainted, unassembled bane knights.

What did I trade for this marvelous prize, you ask? What could I have given away for this particular wonder? How about painted, assembled bane knights?

That’s right. I have a problem.

I’ve done this a few times so far, and I’m really hoping that this time it will be just as good as the other two.

Last time I painted these models, I got about 2/3 the way through and just burned out. they are hard to assemble, they are full of detail, and they are pointing and sticking in every direction. They were hard to store, they were bending every way, and while I was painting them I was just burning out. I finished them, as best I could, and then called it a day. 4 years later, I’m ready to try again, I hope. I’ve got an idea of what I want to do with them, and I have a better grasp on color theory (Thanks, Meg!) and I think I can do magnitudes better to them. The pure bronze scheme I had for them just didn’t work at all. The black and bronze I used for the bane thralls works really well. Those same mentioned bane thralls were one of my units I got again and painted up a second time and the first go round was good, but the second is something I am really proud of.
I’m really hoping that this time I can assemble them in a manner that is easier to store, and I can paint them without burning out. Its along shot hope, but I’ve got it.

I’ll keep updating this as the project continues, but with the massive amount I am playing of Heroes 6, it might be a while. I’ll take pictures along the way, as well, and you can see where they stand.

The Sanctuary faction in Heroes 6 is pretty cool. I will say I was initially all bad mouth on the Sanctuary models, but after using them, I’m really fond of them. Sharks-at-Arms, Naga, Medusa, Water and snow spirits, and Frogmen? The Champion creature, each factions biggest and baddest, is the Kirin, which looks neat, has a huge hit pool, and comes out very fast.

It is much better than Haven, and almost on par with Necropolis in terms of fun factor. The elite naga troopers are pretty terrible which makes me sad though. The big problem is that they are on par with the Haven’s griffon troopers in terms of durability and damage output: which is to say both of them are 0. It is a huge disappointment for both of tthe units, as they are fantastic looking troopers. The upgraded Kenshi/Kensi is a four armed, katana wielding snake man! What is cooler than that? And Haven’s only Non-Humanoid creature is the Griffon, who leaps into the air and diving-assaults people! But both are extremely weak defensively, to the point where core units can break them apart, and their damage output against other elites just isn’t there either. Both have been relegated to the sidelines unless I could stack an enormous amount of them.

Also, My favorite unit, Coral Priestesses, get the hell shelled out of them by the opponent, causing me no end of grief. I only have one or two ranged units, and having one of them burned out by the opponent as fast as possible has been really frustrating.

I’ve made it to map 4, and I’m about to tear Gerharts heart out of his chest, which, for me, is just about as awesome as it gets. I also got to toy around with the Stronghold faction, in the last map, and that got me really pumped to play them.

A Couple Mid-game Observations

Extra Heroes seem redundant unless you need to transport armies. The Enemy armies are just to large for you to be splitting your troops

Chain Lightning seems like a game breaker, but It could just be a factor to try and get the area cleared better and easier.

Water as a spell school is terrible. Air is Amazing.

There are tons of ways to increase your Magic Power stat, but very few to raise you’re Might Power.

There is no good online Resource. Maybe I’ll make one.

Also, on Sunday I traded my perfectly fine, painted bane thralls for unpainted unassembled ones. This’ll be the 3rd time I have done this. I hope this one turns out as successful as the first two.

I got another game of Malifaux in last night.
I played my final Thursday night game against a Tara Crew with my Perdita Crew.
In that game, Perdita Ortega, Spanish gunslinger and Demon Hunter, was charged by an enormous Nothing Beast.
She calmly stared it straight in the eyes, drew her gun, and shot it once, killing it.

This type of evocative, powerful narrative that plays out on the tabletop with Malifaux is really what makes it shine among the other minis games. No other concentrates as much awesome and insanity in as tiny of nuggets. With no more than 20 models on the board, we were able to have an exciting game with clear rules and only a few disputes.
The Scenario was some sort of murder-fest, in which we had to kill two models in a single turn to score points.
The schemes were Protect Territory, Plant Explosives, Assassinate, Distract, and Line in the Sand.
I was trying to Protect Territory and Plant Explosives, and he was trying to Protect Territory and Distract. I managed to set up some explosives, while he managed to steal a point from me by using papa loco to kill himself and the Austringer. We both Protected a ton of territory.
In the end, we tied the game. Francisco the lone Ortega on the board, Facing down his totem, a death marshal, and a nightmare creature. It was glorious

I play the game very little, and am trying to learn the way it plays. Intrinsically woven into this game is the scheme and scenarios, that allow the game to be fun and fair with a semi-natural endpoint. The Endpoint is actually the one thing I dislike in the game. I have found that the organic endings created in Warmachine are much more satisfying than the forced end of game that both Infinity and Malifaux have.

However, it is mitigated somewhat by having enjoyable schemes and strategies. Figuring out what you have to do with your crew and how to manipulate your opponent and your objectives are something I find mentally enjoyable.

Currently, I don’t announce schemes, as I find it hard enough to learn the game itself without my opponent trying to screw me and working directly cross purpose. I know this lessens my chance to actually win the game. I’ll take my licks while learning so that when I take my training wheels off, I’m that much better.

From Reading a bit online, Diestra, one of the Upgrades for the Family, was one I was really ready to get my mitts on. I put it on Perdita, as she only has SH attacks, and therefore will always benefit from it. the [-] on SH defense flips is really, really helpful to Perdita, as it will almost always guarantee a hit. Which will allow her to pick the best poison with which to stamp out her opposition.
The Nothing Beast was one such model. With Point Blank adding rams on all attacks while engaged, and Critical Strike making each ram do +1 damage, I ate a soulstone, giving myself 2 rams, and then ended up cheating in a third. My damage was 2/4/5 bumped to 5/7/8. Given Papa Loco’s dynamite, I was sitting at a cheatable damage flip, and cheated in enough to kill the bugger in a single shot.

I don’t feel that this same activity would have gone on in M1e. One side or the other would have been rocked off the board before anyone was able to really get a cool groove on.

Nabing McMourning, and knowing that he wants to run a guild guard crew makes me pretty psyked to pick up some guild guard in the near future. Hopefully after the wave 2 field test I’ll have a better idea of what to take with him.

The game is fantastic, and every time I say it it feel a little better in my mind. More masters are definitely in my future!

Last night I got to draft M:14. This was enjoyable because I ended up with slivers, again. This is not uncommon for me, but seems to be hard for others to do.

Its a deck that I really like, and once you see it start to pull together can be really satisfying. Grabbing the Galerider sliver first, and much later a Door of Destines really helped the deck out. And once I started cutting people out, I saw the blur sliver, the Hive Stirrings, and the Sliver Construct all table.
I was confident, but I knew things could get in my way.

Through late first pack and most of pack two, though, I was convinced that I wasn’t going to make it function. I’d started doing blue/green for a minute, and even ended up with a serra angel later on. Now I was probably doing green-white, and the green was astoundingly good coming through. Then the green dropped off, and I was left with some good Red.
I was going Naya no matter what, and it just happened that slivers came around pack 3 and made the deck into what I felt would be decent.

I was all set to play some games! it was going to be nothing but slivers and face-beats!
However, we had a 9 man pod of players, and I end up with a first round bye. I’m not a fan of them, even though they come with a win, and it can be really disappointing to not be able to play.
So, I went got a soda, and came back to play some more.
Round 2 I get paired up against the guy who walked in late, giving me a bye, and making us even numbers.
I give him some crap about it, and we carry on. I take him down with some very aggressive draws 2-0, though his mill deck takes out most of my good stuff fairly quick. At this point, I take in the tournament standings, and there are only 2 people who are undefeated. The protocol in MTG is to draw the last round if no one can catch you. Each player ends up splitting the prizes equally instead of one of the players risking being bumped to 3rd. So, the two of us Draw, and we take 1’st and 2nd.
I’ll just go here and say I got 2nd, because really, I can’t fathom that I would come in first after playing only two games and one match.

it boggles my poor mind. I picked up 7 packs, and I stored them for when Theros comes out, and was glad to do so, as the current set of cards just aren’t my cup of tea.

I don’t know about you, but getting second after all that feels just a little more bad than it should.

Last night I got to draft M:14. This was enjoyable because I ended up with slivers, again. This is not uncommon for me, but seems to be hard for others to do.

Its a deck that I really like, and once you see it start to pull together can be really satisfying. Grabbing the Galerider sliver first, and much later a Door of Destines really helped the deck out. And once I started cutting people out, I saw the blur sliver, the Hive Stirrings, and the Sliver Construct all table.
I was confident, but I knew things could get in my way.

Through late first pack and most of pack two, though, I was convinced that I wasn’t going to make it function. I’d started doing blue/green for a minute, and even ended up with a serra angel later on. Now I was probably doing green-white, and the green was astoundingly good coming through. Then the green dropped off, and I was left with some good Red.
I was going Naya no matter what, and it just happened that slivers came around pack 3 and made the deck into what I felt would be decent.

I was all set to play some games! it was going to be nothing but slivers and face-beats!
However, we had a 9 man pod of players, and I end up with a first round bye. I’m not a fan of them, even though they come with a win, and it can be really disappointing to not be able to play.
So, I went got a soda, and came back to play some more.
Round 2 I get paired up against the guy who walked in late, giving me a bye, and making us even numbers.
I give him some crap about it, and we carry on. I take him down with some very aggressive draws 2-0, though his mill deck takes out most of my good stuff fairly quick. At this point, I take in the tournament standings, and there are only 2 people who are undefeated. The protocol in MTG is to draw the last round if no one can catch you. Each player ends up splitting the prizes equally instead of one of the players risking being bumped to 3rd. So, the two of us Draw, and we take 1’st and 2nd.
I’ll just go here and say I got 2nd, because really, I can’t fathom that I would come in first after playing only two games and one match.

it boggles my poor mind. I picked up 7 packs, and I stored them for when Theros comes out, and was glad to do so, as the current set of cards just aren’t my cup of tea.

I don’t know about you, but getting second after all that feels just a little more bad than it should.